I know this borders on class warfare type trope-age, but when it comes to media punditry commiserating on one another’s often nightly programming about being screwed over by “the management” or “people from so and so”, I can’t help but think, so what? You’ve got/made your money, fuck your bruised hubris and ego!
I’m sure it’s mostly the recession talking for me, or my very own stagnant wages, but between Keith Olbermann telling tales of Rupert Murdoch “blackmailing” him in to taking more money and Cenk Uygur puffing his chest and being called a hero for his unceremonious dumping from MSNBC, I’m looking for the pacifier and some earplugs to shut them both up.
In both cases, it’s essentially someone bruising their massive egos. It’s them eating humble pie and telling you that the food stains are actually real blood, sweat and tears being pulled from them against their will!
A few weeks ago Keith Olbermann couldn’t help but hop on the obligatory “Murdoch was a butt hole to me one time…and aha! I have proof” Olbermann told a story from his younger days as a sports “journalist” where he got a scoop that Murdoch was going to sell the Dodgers. Olbermann makes sure to thump this “journalist” thread a few more times, by saying he had rock solid sources….blah blah. He asks Murdoch’s P.R. fellows if he can run the news story, and they agree, only if the sources aren’t Murdoch employees of some kind and blab blah. The fiery journalist in Olbermann doesn’t see the obvious red flags that if he ran this story, it probably wouldn’t bode well for him (more importantly in this case it’s probably to add to his mythological mostly self imposed canon of strong spine and fortitude to “stick it to the man” whilst lazily reclining in “the mans” premises on every occasion). He supposedly gets permission to run the story, and lo and behold days later he is brought in to learn that he is basically being demoted. He then relates a tale of working so hard that his doctor tells him he’ll have heart disease within the decade! Heroically, Olbermann feels obligated to tell his corporate masters that he’d like to take ONE day off from his sports casting duties, just to maintain his health, which is tantamount! (Never mind that most men Olbermann’s age, and who typically reside in high stress occupations, are told about the onset of heart disease if they don’t do something preventative) No, he is told by his Fox Sports overlords led by the Shadow Master Murdoch, he will WORK even MORE, and to top this off he will have to travel! Coldly and with sinister calculation, they offer him more money. Olbermann relates that he takes it, he HAS to! And if Murdoch can do this to someone with as “high a profile” as his, what about the lowly minions?
Now most people who follow Olbermann know he has this knack of story telling. I could imagine that when he see’s himself, he see’s those grand oil paintings that dictators have in their mansion, Where their torso’s are magnanimous and they have bulging muscles, and fierce look on their face, doing something heroic, like riding the purest white stallion with a matching fierce visage!
Now I couple this with Cenk Uygur leaving MSNBC this past week over problems with “the management“. They wanted him to stop being an outsider, not be so hard on Obama, book more Republican guests, stop gesticulating so wildly, etc, etc. --This also reminds me that a cult of victimization amongst are media punditry is kind of getting out of hand don’t you think? This is probably an idea for another time. Back to Cenk!--MSNBC offers Uygur not the vaunted 6 o’ clock show that he think he rightly deserves, in fact he believes he should be promoted to the 7 o clock show, but a weekend show, roving contributor status and get this…MORE MONEY! He turns them down, saying that he will not be reduced to this paltry “roving” business, and the he views this as a demotion. He even whips out the progressive punditry bullshit of providing graphs of figures that show he was dominating CNN in the timeslot and that his show was up in ratings (with the 18-54 “money” demographic) from the same time slot a year ago, before he took over in January. Uygur believes that sense he was doing a better job than Ed Schultz was, who got "promoted" to a better timeslot, that Uygur is crushing it and should be promoted as such.
Now, I caught Uygur’s program a couple of times back in early March, some again in April, and from what I watched of it, MSNBC maybe had a point. To me, Uygur was stiff and seemed to have difficulty reading a teleprompter. The show was an odd experiment of mixing Maddow’s news, fact graphs show with Olbermann’s opinion hubris and not much of Uyuger’s strengths which are of course gesticulating wildly and being hyperbolic much like a bizarre world AM Conservative radio cliche robot. Uygur admits to as much in his Young Turk’s video where he lays out his departure from MSNBC.
Uygur’s rages that he will not be cowed to be an “inside man”, and that he will continue to shout from the outside like he always has been with his Young Turks programming. Which, to those in the progressive media is viewed as ballsy. I don’t get it Cenk, is MSNBC where you were kind of plotting your trajectory? Maybe the nightly thing just wasn’t your bag, but the roving contributor weekend thing was? The weekend show is more to your strengths, you wouldn’t need to dilute yourself down in to nightly segmented half assery, and could deliver a more potent show? On top of this, you were going to get more money, for less work. I imagine many of his progressive media peers would literally kill for something even closely resembling that! And any residual progressive outsider bullshit deficit you were feeling could be mopped up with your Young Turks programming.
Olbermann and Uygur would like us to believe that they’re dancers and performers instead of the sluts of a harem that they truly are. That they’re going to be fighting the good fight for you and not as another media whore mouth sucking on advertising dick to you. They play on their mommies (followers/fans) fears of things like “the man”, “corporate sellouts” and “beltway insiders” while they nestle in the bosom of those very foes, veraciously suckling with all their might!
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with their message, which typically is of truth telling, facts, and shining lights in dark places. But this doesn’t allow them to also be crybabies about someone spanking them and bruising their ego and hubris when they start pushing the wrong buttons and expecting to be rewarded for their rouge behavior as they believe this is why they were hired in the first place.
But lets not confuse them for the corporate whores they really are, who for when the money was right, toed that company line and did as they were told. This is especially true of Olbermann who has been a corporate mouthpiece most of his existence.
Lest we not forget as these two go on to smaller brothels, Current TV for Olbermann and back to The Young Turks for Uygur; that they had their opportunity and they blew it. Not because they wouldn’t be cowed or that they stood up for themselves, but because they’re a crybabies who didn’t get their way, took their collective balls and went home to sulk to mommy.
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